Reaching this point has taken years. While I always dreamed of it, I never imagined I’d wake up on a Monday and spend my morning answering emails about my stories.

Getting messages from readers saying things like, “Your book is amazing,” “I can’t wait for the sequel,” or simply, “Thanks for the update,” still feels unreal. I always respond, always with gratitude. That connection is what truly fuels me.

Sales matter, of course — they keep the lights on and the bills paid — but this matters just as much. It’s the motivation to keep going.

Humans are strange creatures. We need reasons to do things. Without them, we drift. We need pressure, deadlines, and a constant nudge forward. And if I don’t provide that for myself, my wife certainly will.

The blank page, once a source of both excitement and terror, now feels like an old friend, waiting patiently. The words still arrive in fits and starts — some days a torrent, others a trickle — but they always arrive. I’ve learned to trust the process, to accept revision, and to let go of perfection. Each finished chapter, each completed manuscript, feels like a small victory. Somewhere along the way, the journey itself became the reward.

To be frank, my first three books were colossal flops. They sank without a ripple. I nearly ruined my reputation trying to write what I thought people wanted to read.

It took years of listening, failing, adjusting, and refining to understand something simple but vital: you can’t write well without understanding your readers. You don’t need to know them personally, but you must understand how they think, what they care about, and how they experience stories.

Assumptions are dangerous things.

One famous example still makes me wince: the 2021 Burger King UK International Women’s Day tweet — “Women belong in the kitchen.” A marketing disaster built entirely on a lazy assumption. I doubt whoever wrote it still works in writing at all.

Years later, after believing I’d learned from my mistakes, I released another book. To my surprise, it did well. Better than I dared hope. It sold quickly — over a hundred copies on the first day — and vanished from online shelves in a matter of days.

I was thrilled… until the reviews started coming in.

Then came my first one-star review.

It crushed me. I cried for days. I avoided rereading it, as if the words themselves could wound me again. But eventually, I forced myself to look at it properly. And I realised something extraordinary:

The reviewer wasn’t cruel. She wasn’t personal. She was honest.

She had done me a favour.

Trained as a feature journalist, I’d learned to write with sensory overload — long sentences, heavy description, layered explanations. It worked in journalism. It didn’t work in fiction. My habits had become my blind spot.

I thanked her. Sincerely. I never heard back, and she’s probably never read anything else I’ve written. But she changed my writing forever.

When I wrote the sequel, I carried those lessons with me. I studied my audience. I reshaped my style. I abandoned rigid word counts. I learned to show instead of explain. I shifted point of view to give my characters space to breathe.

Reinventing myself as a fiction writer was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was disorienting — like turning the world upside down just to see it clearly again.

Then I released the book.

This time, I waited. I braced for criticism. I let the story find its people.

It didn’t explode into the world. It grew slowly. Quietly. Reader by reader.

Now it’s my most loved book.

Five-star reviews. Long messages. Readers writing to tell me how the characters stayed with them. One even proposed marriage to the villain — which still leaves me deeply confused, but oddly flattered on his behalf.

And yet, the learning hasn’t stopped.

I still make mistakes. I still rewrite. I still doubt. The work is easier now, but never effortless. Growth, I’ve learned, is uncomfortable by nature.

As someone once said, you only learn when you’re uncomfortable.

I always knew words built worlds. I just didn’t understand what truly sustained them.

Yesterday, while out running, it finally clicked:

Consistency.

More on that next time.

Thanks for reading.

I’m only just getting started. There’s a long road ahead.